Across Difficult Country

The slob-orgy that is the ‘holiday shopping season’ coming on the heels of the festival of stupidity that is Thanksgiving with my family always dangerously heightens my already considerable loathing of humanity. To cool my spleen I put down my rifle and turn to the pages of The Tide News: This is a bizarre story that unfolded recently in one of the communities in Rivers State where a vulture was said to have turned to a woman. Small Talks was told that the said vulture was in company of three other vultures that perched on a tree close to a building where a young man recently died and had been buried in the community. On seeing the four vultures, since in African setting, vultures portend evil omen, relations of the deceased young man were said to have chased them away. While three of the other vultures fled the scene, one of them was said to have remained firmly rooted to where it was perching. According to the story, when pebbles were cast on it, it surprisingly turned to a woman. [...

“The harder I work the more I need to smoke because tobacco is the handmaid of literature.” – Sir Compton Mackenzie (1883-1972). Author of nearly 100 books, Mackenzie by his own estimate smoked half a ton of tobacco by the time he was 74, starting with his first cigarette at age four. He once described tobacco as “one of the greatest boons ever conferred upon humanity.”

Unedited, uncensored, unpleasant, and unpredictably updated - behold Craptocracy . Political commentary, all the latest news from the campaign trail, and more.

Those of us warning homosexualist marriage would to lead inter-species unions were proven right last Sunday when a man in Southern India married a female dog named Selvi. Alas, the honeymoon was over before it ever really started : "During a feast attended by some 200 guests after the traditional Hindu wedding ceremony, Selvi grew restless and ran away." But the newlyweds may have patched things up: "She was subsequently recaptured and returned to her husband who gave her milk and a bun to eat." It’s is easy to foresee what comes next: gay inter-species marriage, followed by increasingly disgusting combinations unpleasant to even imagine, leading inevitably to a transsexual marrying a bowl of pudding.

Exciting news from the Islamosphere : An ‘Islamic’ car, complete with compass to find the direction of Mecca and a compartment for the Koran, could soon be under production in Malaysia, Iran or Turkey... Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir, managing director of Malaysian carmaker Proton, told the agency during a trip to Tehran “We will identify a car that we can develop to be produced in Malaysia, Iran or Turkey”. "The car will have all the Islamic features and should be meant for export purposes," he continued, adding that the vehicle was an Iranian initiative. I once invented an ‘Islamic’ TV set. It was an ordinary television with two black bands painted over all but the middle of the screen allowing Mussulmen to safely view Western shows featuring women. It never caught on, which ought to tell you something.

Was Jesus a descendant of black extraterrestrial time travelers? The Canadian , Canada’s finest newspaper, investigates . In other news, novelist and vulgarian Norman Mailer has died . While no one reads his fugging books anymore (much like Norman himself, as they aged they only became more rancid) his film Tough Guys Don’t Dance is now widely recognized as the second best movie of 1987.

"Driving home, with canals, slums, and giant toll-roads passing by outside, the invisible fumes made it hard to breathe. And sadly, the pollution came not from a factory or a machine, but the moist armpits of my toothless Javanese driver. Indonesia, it seems, is content to fall behind its neighbours, Thailand and Malaysia, not only in education and science, but now in standards of personal hygiene as well. Indonesians may be overcoming the Krismon and building democracy, but along the way we’ve abandoned the basics: soap and deodorant. It’s not just the men, either. Ladies, cheap perfume — no matter how much you lather on –- cannot hide the pungency if you’ve been wearing the same panties for days. A guy wants a woman to smell like a Jasmine flower or a Rose, not a raw, week-old Gurame fish!" - Achmad tells it like it is .

Dear The New Criterion, In the current issue Jeffrey Hart writes : Jacques Barzun was so eminent a figure that it is surprising to me that he remained so accessible and encouraging to much younger men. Then and now, when I think of Barzun, I recall the Oxford clerihew about the great classicist and polymath Benjamin Jowett: My name is Jowett Of Balliol College; If I don’t know it, It is not knowledge. Alas, that is not a clerihew . Neither is it an accurate quotation. The famous verse about Jowett was: First come I. My name is Jowett. There's no knowledge but I know it. I am the Master of this College, What I don't know isn't knowledge While we’re at it, the January 2006 issue arrived in my mailbox minus its cover. While vandalism perpetrated by a Leftist postal worker can’t be ruled out (why are so many postal workers Communists?), it seems likely the missing cover is the result of a mishap at the printing plant. I would be much obliged if an intact copy were sent as a re...